Chapter Text
It was hot as hell, pushing 106°F according to the weather report, 110°F on the digital read-out on the First Bank sign. Waves of it baked off the asphalt in the parking lot, and he could smell Le Brea from a mile away, the tar pits probably bubbling and boiling like a witch’s cauldron. Air conditioners rattled and hummed for miles around. People walked here and there under hats and umbrellas, eating rapidly melting snow cones and ice cream. The turkey leg vender had closed up shop; no one wanted a steaming drumstick right now.
Chris swiped at his forehead and put on his shades, the baseball cap he’d thought was in the car woefully missing. He didn’t intend to spend too long out here anyway, walking between campers and tent-covered tables of the Melrose Trading Post Flea Market. He’d been moping around his apartment for days, testament to the latest end of his short-lived relationships, and hey, he was a red-blooded native Angeleno. A little retail therapy wouldn’t hurt. Hipster-style.
He walked the stalls, flipping through boxes of vinyl and carts of hand-dyed scarves and sarongs. He had nothing particular in mind, just something that might strike the right chord with his maudlin feelings.
He came across a set-up of vases and other glass tchotchkes. At the corner of the table was a cardboard box containing maybe twenty or so pieces, ranging from decanters, flasks, shakers and tumblers, maybe misplaced parts of a set or single pieces themselves. Most looked antique and most were probably junk, but there was always the possibility of buried treasure. That was the whole point of walking the flea market, after all.
He blamed his mother and grandmother, really. Grammie had rubbed elbows with some of Hollywood’s major players back in her day: Bogart, Lugosi, maybe even Sinatra. She’d had lot of the old Deco aesthetic in her little cottage, much of which his mom and uncle had split between them when she’d passed away a few years ago. He had always liked the strong lines and industrial geometric shapes of the era. It was in his blood, growing up here in Hollywood’s shadow. He’d never expected to want to follow in their footsteps until he found out how much he loved the spotlight.
He started to pick through the box, seeking out the glass colors he liked the best. The old woman at the booth leaned forward in her folding chair, watching him in anticipation. He put one bottle aside and reached for another.
“You buy whole box, ten dollar.”
“Really?” Chris pushed up his shades and brought out the puppy eyes, which tended to do a lot for him in the old lady department, “I can’t just pick and choose? I’d pay you more than ten dollars. I’d pay you… five dollars for each one I pick out.”
“No no no,” The old woman was steadfast, both hands to the box as if pushing it away, but unwilling to touch it herself, “Whole box.”
Chris made a point of looking like it was a steep offer, but man, he really wanted that Deco-ware. “Tell you what, I’ll give you twenty. Whole box.”
The old woman gave him a toothy grin and happily took his money. He collected his box and strode off, figuring he’d just pick out the junk glass later. He had to wonder why she was so eager to get rid of it all so cheaply, it didn’t seem of any lesser quality than the rest of the stuff she was selling, some had to be worth a little bit. They might be lead crystal and incomplete sets, but it’s not like he’d be using them to impress anyone or decant anything. He just liked the mystique.
In the parking lot, he set the box over on his passenger’s seat and scooted in after it, sticking the key in the ignition and cranked the air up with a grin.
Back at home, he pulled his elderly BMW under the carport, tucked the box under one arm and jogged up the stairs, glass tinkling. Juggling to get his apartment door unlocked, he set it into his armchair and went to grab a water from the fridge. He guzzled the whole bottle as he listened to his answering machine: ex-girlfriend wanting back a plant he’d stopped watering and trashed probably a week back, mom wanting him to call and talk about said ex, agent going on about some shitty TV guest spots his dad would tell him to take, but he didn’t want now that he had a few leads under his belt, albeit in crummy rom-coms. Now he was waiting for something really special to come along.
In the living room, he picked out one of the bottles from the top of the box, tilting it in the sunlight from the window and gauging that old-fashioned sparkle. It was a simple, small decanter of sorts, maybe more like a large perfume bottle, and it didn’t match any of the other stuff. The glass itself was heavy, possibly genuine crystal with kind of a smoky purplish tinge, and the stopper was missing. He rubbed his thumb through the caked dust. Twenty bucks, he thought with an amused headshake. With a little cleaning up, some of this stuff would look great on a bar. If he had a bar. Maybe one day when he made it big, he’d buy one of those 1940’s homes up the hill, one with a snazzy built-in bar, and this shit would fit right in. A guy can dream, right?
“Hi.”
“HOLY SHIT!” Chris screamed, leaping around in his skin and darting across the room, because there was a nearly naked dude lounging across his sofa like Cleopatra.
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” said the guy, examining his nails with nonchalance.
“Who the fuck are you?” shrieked Chris, “Why are you in my house?”
He searched wildly around for a weapon, cursing that his old baseball gear was in a closet somewhere. He hefted the bottle in his hand, poised to throw it at the intruder.
“Whoa, okay,” the guy sat up, swinging long hairy legs down and raising his hands, palms out and eyes wide at the bottle, “Could you please not throw that?”
“Why the fuck not, man!?”
“Uh, because it would break? And hurt me? A lot?”
“Yeah, that would be the point!” He drew his hand back and got a sick thrill at the way the guy flinched.
“Okay, please don’t. Please, just put it down and we’ll talk like civilized people, okay?” the guy entreated, standing with both hands placating. “I won’t hurt you.”
“The hell you won’t.”
“I won’t. I promise. Please put it down?” he asked again.
Chris hesitated, trying to get a grip on the situation. The guy was wearing some weird-ass shimmery material as a loincloth, thick, gaudy gold chains around his wrists, and nothing else. Must have come from a costume party or whatever. It was fucking July, nowhere near Halloween, but this was LA, some people didn’t need much of an excuse.
“I don’t have any money,” he insisted, “Or valuables.” Kind of a lie, he wasn’t exactly waiting tables for a living anymore. But he wasn’t a particularly materialistic guy either, last century impulse-buy glassware aside. He was saving up, okay? For the house on the hill.
“That’s fine,” Loincloth nodded. “Actually, that bottle you have there is pretty valuable, so… so if you could just not break it, that would be really great.”
“You want it?” Chris said, holding it out immediately. “Take it!”
“No no, I don’t want it,” the guy flapped his hands at it hastily, “Just put it down. Gently. Please.”
Eyes never leaving him, Chris took a wary step forward to set the bottle down on the coffee table between them. The guy let out a long exhale, dropping his hands and then draping himself across Chris’ sofa again. “Thank you.”
“Kay, no,” Chris huffed, gesturing at him, “That wasn’t an open invitation to get comfy and make yourself at home.”
The guy shrugged, “No, but I figure I might as well.”
“Did you get drunk and break into the wrong apartment or something?” Chris asked, because it was a likely explanation. His buddy Patrick had done that one time, they’d laughed about it for ages.
“What? No,” said the guy.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“You brought me here, you tell me.”
“I didn’t bring you anywhere. Get out of my house!” Chris was getting seriously heebied out. Dude was sassy now that he wasn’t being threatened with lead crystal to the face.
Loincloth raised a finger, “Um, you did, and technically I can’t leave, so…”
“Okay, I’m calling the fucking cops,” Chris grabbed for his phone and brandished it.
“No, don’t do that, it just complicates things,” the guy stood up again, but Chris furiously dialed, grabbing the bottle again and darting to put the chair between them in case the guy made a move. Loincloth just threw his hands in the air, “Oh my god, I hate the 20th century. Fine. Call the cops.” And he collapsed back on the couch with a disdainful huff.
“Twenty-first,” Chris corrected. “Twenty-first century.”
“Is it? Huh.”
Chris walked back around to see the guy’s face, leveling his most thunderous glare at him as he waited for a connection. Hopefully the imminent threat of arrest would work before the weirdo tried anything. “Hello? Yeah, there’s a dude in a loincloth in my house! No, I don’t know him, he’s just here and naked and I want him out! I’m staring right at him and he won’t leave! What? Of course I asked him to! No, I don’t think he’s armed, but maybe he’s happy to see me? Citizen’s arrest or whatever, can you just send someone, please?”
The lady on the line said she would, and then told him because it wasn’t a priority call, to hang up and call back if he felt in any danger. Right, because that would be easy. If this creeper decided to strangle him, he’d just ask him to hang on a sec while he called back.
“So this is your place?” the guy said after several minutes in a stare-down, which Chris lost. Dude was all intense eyebrows and shit.
He crossed his arms defensively, “What about it?”
“Nothing,” Loincloth smiled, lounging back even farther, hairy legs propped wide. “Nicer than mine.”
“I get it,” said Chris, “You don’t have air conditioning, right? You figured you’d just take advantage of someone else’s?” That had been a major perk of this place, actually, it had central air.
“Not really,” the guy replied. “I don’t mind the heat.”
Chris picked up the bottle again, studying it, “So this is valuable?”
The guy eyed it disdainfully, “To some, I suppose.”
“To you?” asked Chris. “What if I do break it?”
“I’d really rather you didn’t,” the guy answered, “It’s complicated.”
Chris was about to push for some explanation, but was interrupted by a knock.
“Finally!” He set the bottle aside on a bookshelf, pulling the door open to two LAPD beat cops dressed in their shorts, which was always a little hard to take seriously. Chris had practically grown up around LA Vice, it just reminded him of ‘Uncle’ Erik. “He’s right there,” he pointed to the sofa. “Nice costume, right?”
The cops both looked around the apartment, then at each other, then back at him. “Sir?”
“On the couch,” Chris pointed again. “I don’t know this guy. I came home and he was in my apartment like he owns the place.”
Both officers looked at the sofa, frowning. Loincloth raised his heavy eyebrows, waving at the pair of them, “What a pleasure, officers. Welcome to the party. Soon we might have enough to do the Village People.”
The cops looked back at Chris. “Sir, are you feeling okay?”
“What do you…” Chris blinked, confused, “I’m fine, I just want this dude gone!”
The younger cop started walking the small apartment, one hand on his holster, checking the kitchen, peering into the bedroom and bathroom down the short hall, shaking his head at his partner as he returned.
“Son, now I don’t want to alarm you,” the older officer tentatively said to Chris, gesturing to the sofa, “but I don’t see anyone there.”
“What are you talking about?” Chris stared at him and then at Loincloth, who crossed his arms over his hairy chest with a jingle of chains and stared brazenly right back. “I’m looking right at you, right? Talking to you?”
“Yup,” he answered definitively, “You are talking to me. But whether or not Ponch and Jon believe you is up in the air.”
Utterly flummoxed at the reference, Chris just stared back at him.
The younger officer shook his head silently to his older counterpart, then turned to Chris, “Sir, have you been drinking?”
“What? No.”
“Have you been using any controlled substances?”
“Of course not!” he sputtered.
“I did some EMT training,” the younger officer offered, “You mind if I take a closer look at you?”
“Whatever,” Chris muttered, watching Loincloth smirk as he moved the box to the coffee table and sat in his armchair.
The cop squatted in front of him, shining a penlight in his eyes and taking his pulse, “Do you have any medical conditions? Any regular meds you might have missed or taken too much of?”
“No,” he replied, “I mean, I get kind of hypoglycemic sometimes.”
“Have you eaten today?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I had coffee this morning. Leftover slice of pizza.” He couldn’t have guessed exactly how old said pizza might have been, but no, naked dude was still right there in front of him, watching in apparent amusement. It couldn’t be a delusional mirage.
“Son,” the older cop moved around the coffee table, tugging up the thighs of his shorts. As he sat down to demonstrate the couch was—to his knowledge, anyway—vacant, Loincloth yanked his long legs out of the way, rolling his eyes in affront of nearly being sat on. “There’s no one in here but us three.”
“Are you sure you didn’t take anything else?” the second asked. “Maybe club candy last night, might still be wearing off? You won’t be in trouble for admitting use.”
“No! I don’t do that stuff, I didn’t go out last night. I haven’t even had a beer since yesterday afternoon,” Chris insisted. When they exchanged a glance of disbelief, he elaborated, “I woke up this morning about ten, had coffee, watched The Price Is Right. Then I went to the flea market, walked around for maybe a couple hours,” he threw a hand at the box of glassware, “I bought this box of shit and came back home!”
The older cop poked through the box, pulling the stopper on one decanter and sniffing it.
“Sunstroke, maybe? It’s blazing out there, and you look pretty scorched. You really should have put on sunscreen on a day like today,” the younger cop said, standing again. “I think you should drink lots of water, throw out that pizza and get something fresh and healthy. Maybe stay in and take it easy tonight, okay?”
Chris blinked up at both of them, and then at the dude on his couch again, frowning with confusion and now a little fear.
“Do you still see someone here besides us, son?” the older cop asked, and this time it had the implication of calling for the happy wagon to a psych ward. His mom would have a cow.
“I don’t know,” he lied, deliberately looking elsewhere, at the bottle he’d set on the bookshelf, away from the rest. He rubbed his fingers and thumb into his eyes, because hey, he was an actor, dammit. “I… I guess not, not anymore. I… I guess I don’t know what I was seeing. Maybe it is sunstroke. ”
“Do you want us to call someone for you?” asked the young cop sympathetically, “Maybe you’d feel better if someone you know looked in on you?”
“No, I think… I think I’ll be okay if I just get some rest. I’ve, uh… I’ve been working overtime lately, and I just went through a pretty bad break up and…” he lied again, feeling a blush rise to his already hot face.
“Alrighty,” the old cop stood, pulling a card out of his breast pocket, “You call us back if you need any help, okay? That number goes to my department voicemail. We can put you in touch with someone.” He patted Chris’ shoulder paternally as he walked them out, apologizing for wasting their time and thanking them, then shut the door.
And looked right back at the sofa. Dude was still there, plain as fucking day.
“A bad break up?” Loincloth drawled, “‘I’m hallucinating because I feel lonely and unloved’. Really?”
“You were right in front of them. Why couldn’t they see you?” Chris asked, rubbing at his eyes and peering at him again, “Am I going crazy?”
The guy merely looked at him with an air of sass. “I don’t know, are you? I can never tell these days.”
Chris ignored that, a little freaked out. He rubbed at the itchy dried sweat on his arms, finally feeling the sting of the sunburn. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want anything from you,” the guy rolled his eyes, “The question is, what do you want from me?”
“Nothing. I want you to leave.”
“Well,” the guy pressed his fingertips to his lips, “That puts us at an unfortunate impasse.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I’m here to serve you.” The guy lounged back again, fixing him with a dark stare. “You’re my Master.”
“What the fuck, dude,” Chris blurted, pacing the room again. “First of all, no. Even if I knew you from a bag of corn chips, you’d have to buy me a drink first. Second, I don’t want to be anybody’s ‘Master’.” He made finger quotes for emphasis. “That particular kink is not really my scene.”
“And yet, you are my Master, regardless,” the dude said. “As far as I can tell, your singular desire is for me to leave, which is the one thing I can’t do until you release me.”
“I release you, then,” Chris waved his hand like he was deterring an annoying fly, “Go away.”
The guy hooked a finger into the chain around his wrist and tugged, “Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.”
Chris sat back down in the chair, narrowing his eyes. Either this guy was a figment of his sun-baked imagination, or he was aware of something Chris wasn’t. He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Okay. Explain. I’m listening.”
The guy gave a long suffering sigh. “In the beginning, there were made three beings under God, depending on which version you subscribe to. Humans, made of Clay; Angels, made of Light; and Djinn, made of Fire.”
“I’m not religious.”
“Yeah, well, on your science side, then, my kind usually exist on another plane. Quantum physics, inter-dimensionality. I am Djinn. You can see me because you currently possess the vessel Between.”
“Still not making any sense,” said Chris. “All I know is that you showed up in my house and I’m the only one who can see you? Are you even real?”
“Since when does visibility have anything to do with being real?” the guy scoffed, “Can you see air?”
“No, I mean like…” Chris waved his hand, then looked at it and back at him. “Corporeal. Can I touch you?”
The guy sighed, extending his own hand. Chris leaned forward to shake it. “I’m Chris, by the way.”
“Zekharyah.”
“That’s a mouthful. Zak-hah— Zach—”
“Zach is fine.”
“Zach,” Chris repeated, letting go of his hand and then looking at his own palm, “You’re really hot. Not like hot, but like…hot. Is that normal?”
“Yes,” Zach raised a dark eyebrow. “I like I said, made of fire.”
“Okay,” Chris smiled skeptically. “Humans aren’t made of clay, though.”
“Oh, you’re not?” Zach queried in the same sardonic tone, “Okay, Science Guy. You’re made of carbon, various minerals, proteins and water. Clay.”
“And you’re made of the chemical process of combustion?” Chris smirked. “So why isn’t my house burning down around you?”
“Because I have some self-control, genius.”
“Right.”
Zach rolled his eyes and lifted his hand again, palm up, and it burst into flame, right before his eyes.
“Whoa!” Chris jumped back, transfixed. Zach closed his fist, and the flame expired as abruptly as it began. He idly shook the bluish ash from his palm, the skin unburned. Chris grinned boyishly, “Hey, that’s so cool! Are you a magician or something?”
“In a manner of speaking. I have certain abilities.”
“This is like some X-men thing, right?” Chris wondered, “Like, are you a super-evolved human?”
“No. I’m not human. My kind came before you, you inherited this plane from us,” he replied haughtily. “Like I said, I’m a Djinn.”
“A what now?”
“A Djinn.”
“A jean?” Chris said, “Speaking of which, could you put some pants on? ‘Cause this whole situation is—” The guy was lounging again, knees spread open, junk all but on display under sheer shimmery cloth. Chris had spent the last hour trying to avert his eyes, but geez. “I probably have some sweat pants you can borrow.”
Zach rolled his eyes again with a dramatic sigh. “Okay, you’re obviously one of the ones that I’m not getting through to. Please don’t pee, okay? I can’t deal with the stench of human waste.”
He stood, raising his arms up from his sides, and his feet left the floor, floating a few inches above it and drifting closer.
Chris grinned stupidly up at him. “Dude, I saw that Criss Angel guy do that on the Strip in Vegas this one time. Neat trick.”
“It isn’t a trick, and I’m no Angel.” The guy’s voice did something weird, becoming deeper, louder, a more sinister growl Chris felt almost to his bones. The room darkened, the light all but sucked from it as he loomed closer, grew bigger, eyes blackening like burning coals to orange, blue, fiery white. His skin blistered, hair singing off up his arms, legs and chest as the blue-black char encompassed his whole body, a oily smoke swirling around. The doofy grin on Chris’ face stretched to one of horror, and he pulled up his knees and clutched his head in some attempt to protect himself from the thing nearly on top of him.
“I AM DJINN,” it roared, rattling Chris’ teeth in his skull. “YOU HAVE RELEASED ME. I AM YOURS TO COMMAND, MASTER.”
It shrank back down to the floor, brushing away the remaining blue ash from its skin, and once again appeared as a normal human being.
“So, there’s that,” the guy pushed his dark hair back and flopped gracefully down on the couch.
Chris gave a bleat of terror and fled the room.
Okay.
So the thing in Chris’ house obviously wasn’t human, it wasn’t normal, it wasn’t anything he’d ever believed could exist in real life. But it couldn’t be imaginary either, not so far as he could tell, and he was really reasonably sure his psychologist family members would have informed him if he was prone to psychotic episodes. Chris liked to think he was an intelligent, rational person. He liked facts.
But he liked fiction too. He was a lit nerd and an actor; fiction was kind of his thing.
Once he got over himself, he peered back out from his bedroom to see the thing still out there, lounging on his couch flipping tv channels. He was now wearing cut off jeans and a sleeveless tee, looking for all the world like one of Chris’ buddies. Not so intimidating without the fire and the floating. So he tried to reclaim his balls and hovered in the entry to the living room, keeping a wary eye on the intruder.
“Hey, why isn’t Golden Girls on?” the guy asked him distractedly.
“What?”
“Golden Girls? You know, ‘Thank you for being a friend’?”
Chris frowned, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Isn’t it on this channel? Why do you have like 900 channels on this thing?”
“Dude, that show ended when I was about twelve years old.”
The guy’s eyes swung back to him with shock, “What? Why?”
Chris threw out a gesture of obviousness, “I dunno, man, because old ladies get tired and die eventually?”
The guy slumped down in the cushions, looking terribly sad. “Oh. Right.”
Chris ventured farther into the room, picking up the bottle and sitting in his armchair, studying the old crystal.
“So, you’re like a genie?” he asked, completely suspending disbelief now. “You came out of this bottle?”
“I’m not like anything. I’m a Djinn.”
“That’s what I said. A genie.”
Zach gave a put-upon sigh. “Does the word matter?”
“Actually, yeah,” Chris jabbed a thumb at himself, “Lit major. I like words.”
“Fine. I am a Djinn. Tayaliq, peri, marid, daemon, fate, ifrit, dís, seraph, genie. These are all words your kind have for what I am. I’m a being not of your dimension, put into that bottle,” he sneered at it, “to do the bidding of its current bearer.”
Chris looked at the bottle, a slow smile curling on his face. “You’re a genie, and you’re here to grant me wishes.”
Zach clenched his jaw. “Yes.”
“Is Santa Claus real too?”
The guy eyeballed him, “Do parents lie to their kids for years about a fat man who breaks into the house to bring presents if they behave, when all they do is go buy the little brats whatever will make them happy regardless of their shitty behavior? Sure, Santa’s as real as a lie can be.”
“So you’re not from this plane, or dimension, or whatever? Like, there are other worlds out there?”
“Yes, puny conceited human,” said Zach sarcastically, “There are other realms. Millions of them. You really aren’t the special snowflakes you think you are.”
“And yet, you’re the one living in a bottle in this one,” Chris demonstrated he wasn’t the dullest crayon in the box. “Why aren’t you in your own, then? If you hate this shitty dimension so much, why are you here?”
The Djinn looked sulkily away, heavy lashes dropping to the remote control in his hand, “I committed a crime.”
“So you’re a prisoner,” Chris remembered the old Disney cartoon he’d loved as a kid. Funny that he’d never thought about why the affable blue genie was imprisoned in the first place. “And this is your punishment? What crime?”
“None of your business.”
“It is my business, I’m your Master. You have to do everything I say.”
“Actually I don’t have to do anything you say, unless you specifically wish it,” Zach retorted. “And furthermore, if I were to tell you the nature of my crime, you could coerce me into committing it again. I’m a creature of Free Will, just like you.”
“That’s weird.”
“Yes, well, life is weird.”
“But like, I thought Angels and Demons existed to influence humanity one way or another. For good or evil, or whatever.”
“Number one: I’m not an Angel, and I’m not a Demon. I am Djinn. My purpose is to do with my Masters’ desires, which might be good or evil, both or neither, depending on your ideas of morality. Two: anyone can influence anyone else, whether or not they act based on that influence is their own doing and may they suffer the consequences. That’s Free Will.”
That was confusing to parse out, so Chris redirected. “So what are you here for?” he asked, “I mean, why me?”
“How did you acquire my bottle?”
“I bought it at a flea market this morning,” Chris gave a little laugh, looking at the cardboard box still sitting on the floor, “This old lady made me buy that whole box of glassware, even though I really only wanted a few pieces.”
“Including mine?”
Chris looked at the bottle again. “I mean, I guess maybe I picked it up at one point, sure.”
“And rubbed it?”
“It was dusty.”
Zach humphed. “Old woman. Argentinean?”
“Maybe? I dunno.”
The Djinn snorted, “She was a real peach.”
“She seemed pretty eager to get rid of this.”
“I may have had a little fun with her,” shrugged Zach, “She overreacted.”
“Like you did with me earlier?”
“Oh my god, she was so melodramatic,” he scoffed, “Her neighbors were either going to carry her out of there in a straightjacket or a box. They tried to exorcise me away. Literally all she had to do was put me back in the bottle and get the fuck over herself. Took years to coax her to do it. Years of her curses and rosaries and hissy fits. Obviously she threw me in your box of junk and left me there for a decade or so.”
The guy didn’t look any older than Chris. “So, are you immortal? How old are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“It’s just a question,” he replied, “Of scope, I guess. I’m a puny human, blow my mind. Five hundred years… five thousand?”
“I don’t even know anymore,” the Djinn sighed. “More than ten thousand, probably. Can’t see much from inside a bottle, you know.”
Chris tried to take that in, trying to think of all the fantasy literature he’d read and how little it helped him here. In fact, the only thing that did resonate was that old cartoon.
“So, is it like in Aladdin? Are there rules?” Chris waved a hand, “What were they… you can’t kill anyone, you can’t make people fall in love… you can’t wish for more wishes. I get three, right?”
Zach smiled like an unenthused parent. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Okay, terms, then,” he sat back, readying himself, “Give it to me.”
“First,” Zach began, “I can only appear to and do the bidding of the bearer of that bottle.”
Chris held up the bottle to the light. “So if anyone else touches it…?”
“If they touch it with desire in their heart, your claim is forfeit, and I will belong to the new bearer,” Zach glanced back at the bottle, “So if you value your claim, you should keep it close. You’d be surprised how many times a former Master’s housekeeper suddenly becomes filthy rich. Also, I can’t leave the vicinity of the bottle, nor can I touch it myself, I must come out and return to it as you bid me, no one else but you can see me, yada yada,” he gave a sulky huff, “But seriously, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t make me stay inside all the time.”
“‘Phenomenal cosmic power, itty bitty living space?’” Chris quoted with a big grin complete with Robin William’s impression.
Zach just looked confused, “What?”
“Never mind,” Chris cleared his throat. “Okay, what next?”
“Like I said, I can’t affect the Free Will of anyone,” said Zach, “Meaning, I can’t force you or anyone else to fall in love, to kill someone, or otherwise make a decision they don’t come to of their own accord.”
“So how do you grant wishes, then?”
“I influence events as they play out, alter perceptions, make certain things seem more desirable or more revolting than they are in reality. I can also make and change material things. Money, possessions, appearance.”
“How?”
Zach gave an eyeroll, “I’m a magician. I do magic.”
“Magic isn’t real,” he tried, “It’s just slight of hand or… chemistry.”
“Mmm,” the genie said, “I wonder which one your kind is leaning towards these days. It always goes in cycles, science or magic, reality or fiction.”
“Yeah, but,” Chris said, “You set yourself on fire, that was real, I could feel it.”
“Humans are incredibly easy to manipulate. You saw flame, therefore you believed you felt a heat intense enough to burn. Your kind jump to conclusions so easily, and without forethought. It makes you gullible,” he grinned sharply, prowling to the nearer end of the sofa, reaching out toward Chris’ chin. “For instance, these scars on your face. How did you acquire them?”
Chris frowned and reddened, embarrassed, “It’s… I had bad acne as a kid. You aren’t supposed to pick at it, but—”
Suddenly the genie pounced, shushing his recoil as he crouched over Chris in the armchair. His hot hands cupped Chris’ cheeks, thumbs stroking over the pitted spots, fingertips brushing parts of his face almost tenderly: his eyebrow, his jaw, his ear. “I said that I influence human desire, Christopher. I can bring your potential to the attention of others, influence their desire, to your benefit. Whether you use it for good or evil is your call.”
Chris swallowed, as startled by the creature straddling over him as he was by the gentleness of his touch, the glitter of his eyes. They weren’t black as he’d previously thought, but more of a warm coffee brown. Once the genie withdrew, he handed Chris a mirror, one that evoked a vague memory of his grandma’s dressing table and all the baubles and potions on its surface, something he surely didn’t own. But in the reflection, his face looked…
He looked kind of amazing. It was him, but another version: different, altered, photoshopped. His skin was smooth and clean, jawline strong, with stubble that wasn’t patchy, no angry redness speckling his chin. The scars were there, but somehow diminished, blurred. Even the mole by his ear was less noticeable. But it was all still his own face, fully recognizable.
“Huh,” he touched his face, in awe that he could look this good. “Wait, does this use up one of my wishes?”
“No. It’s a glamour,” Zach said, then elaborated at Chris’ blank look. “An illusion. Humans, I have found, respond best to nearly flawless beauty. Like the form I take for you now. Nearly flawless, you understand. Humanity idolizes the idea of perfection, but when confronted with its truth, it usually freaks you out.”
“I guess,” Chris muttered, studying this new look on his face. “Not always, though. So how come you didn’t come to me looking like Barbara Eden?” he hitched up one corner of his mouth.
“I prefer to take a form that is a reflection of my Master’s unconscious desires in human skin.”
“And this is my unconscious desire?” Chris waved a hand at Zach skeptically. “A hairy sassmaster in a loincloth?”
Zach smirked, “You might be surprised what I can dig out of that primitive little brain of yours.”
Chris looked back at his own altered face in the mirror, frowning.
“Can you put it back?” he asked, touching the place where the biggest scar used to be, now blurred under stubble.
“Do you want me to?”
Chris looked at his reflection again. No. He didn’t want to be that guy, didn’t want to succeed just because of his looks, or rely on his looks to succeed. He had talent, dammit, and intelligence. And he’d done it all on his own so far. “Yeah. Yeah, change it back.”
Zach casually waved his hand, and when he looked in the mirror again, his face looked like he remembered, looked like him, zits and all.
He sat back and considered the magnitude of this, taking up the bottle from his lap. “Three wishes. Anything I want?”
“Within the established parameters, yes,” Zach sat back himself, watching him. “Anything you want.”
“This is nuts,” Chris sighed. It really was. What could he wish for? What exactly did he want out of his life? If it was just handed to him by a magical genie, did he really deserve it? It was mind-boggling.
Suddenly he was exhausted, and he did feel a little icky now that he thought about it. Maybe he really did have sunstroke. Maybe that pizza was more than a week old. Maybe he needed to take a cold shower and a nap.
He looked back at the guy, “Listen, I’m gonna need to think about this for awhile. Is that okay?”
Zach lifted both hands, “Hey, I have all the time in the world. Immortality and all.”
“Right,” Chris held out the bottle again, “So, how do I put you back in?”
The genie’s face twitched unhappily, “You tell me to go back in.”
“No magic spell or anything?” Zach leveled a withering look at him, and Chris shrugged. “So… go back in. No, wait!”
The dark look shifted to annoyance.
“How do I get you back out again?”
Zach rolled his eyes. “Rub the bottle.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Or just speak my name.”
“The real one, right?”
“Zach is fine,” he said. “You’re my Master. As long as you keep the bottle close, I can hear you.”
“Okay,” Chris shifted in his seat, holding the bottle out between them. He watched closely, not wanting to miss this, “So, go back in.”
Those dark eyes were almost betrayed if he thought about it too hard, but the thought disintegrated as quickly as the dude did, literally wafted apart before his eyes. It was bizarre to watch a solid human figure seem to fizzle apart into a hazy, curling bluish smoke, which drifted close and then sucked itself into the little crystal bottle.
And then Chris was alone. The overtaxed air conditioner hummed, the sitcom on the tv mutedly played a laugh track, the couch empty. Ordinarily, he was relieved to have his place to himself again when company left, but this felt different, like he wasn’t alone at all.
He carried the bottle with him to his bedroom, setting it on his dresser and staring at it before he pulled his shirt over his head. In the mirrored doors of the closet, he could now see the crisp line where his tank covered the pasty freckled flesh of his shoulder and the angry red that had been exposed.
He cranked on the shower to a tepid cool, sighing as he stepped in and turned it colder to take the sting of the sunburn away. By the time he collapsed in his bed, the strange feeling had gone, and he slept.